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The Wikipedia article about Willie Horton mentions the ad but in a neutral way, it does not claim that the ad was racially motivated, it just mentions that some people alleged that it was racially motivated. Wikipedia is not a conservative source and is almost certainly one of most common places where people go to find out about this matter.
That's how Wikipedia biases articles 80% of the time.
Except the racial controversy is the only reason the ad is remembered 35 years later. How many ads from the last presidential election do you remember?
The last Presidential election had a first-party ad under the candidate's own twitter account insinuate an innocent man was a White Supremacist, so there's at least one that I'd consider people personally and deeply irresponsible for publishing. And this isn't the first time I've brought it up, or even brought it up in a conversation with you, even if I am pleasantly surprised a few other predictions related to that were flubs.
Romney was personally responsible for a woman's cancer death, Kerry had the SwiftBoat mess. Go back a little further and you have the famous Daisy ad and Confessions of a Republican (remade for the 2016 season!) in a single election. "Read My Lips" and "Act of Love" were mostly unusual for being somewhat near honest.
They don't all have wikipedia articles, but a good number are memorable; with the exception of Confessions of a Republican and maybe "Act of Love", I'd hope anyone who's been paying attention politically in the last decade is familiar with most of these. A rare few aren't even attack ads; Reagan's "bear in the woods" ad has a wiki article because... some reason? The deletionists haven't heard about it yet?
It's not like this is even specific to Presidential elections: see The Agenda Project anti-Paul Ryan ad, or the hilariously offensive attack ad on Abbott in Texas.
And the Horton ad is at least believed to have been hugely effective, along with Dukakis' infamous tank ride, as part of why he lost in a landslide. I'm not sure how much I buy that compared to the macro-economic trends or broader policy disagreements -- same for Romney and Kerry, while I think Jeb! had broader and deeper issues than immigration policy -- but at least in claimed reasoning a lot of people point to them.
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While I agree with Gwern's take on the matter, Wikipedia has also institutionally decided that it isn't a List Of All Things To Ever Have Happened. The "x pounced" framework isn't unusual (though contrast Horton with Daisy), but it is and long has been an active choice, as evidenced by the talk page.
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